In the fabrication of sanitary pads such as sanitary napkins, hospital pads, disposable diapers and the like, a certain percentage of the pads will be defective and are discarded. While the filler material utilized in such pads, typically cellulose fluff, constitutes high quality reusable material, other component parts of the pad such as the film backing and adhesive tape fasteners are not in condition for reuse and at best contaminate the reusable fluff. Heretofore, any attempt to reuse the fluff or filler material has involved returning the entire pad, including the undesirable film backing and adhesive tape fastener components thereof to a recovery unit which tears the pad apart and returns all components thereof in comminuted form to the pad manufacturing machine. This results in a small percentage of film and adhesive tape particles in the filler for the next batch of pads and contaminates and reduces the quality of the filler material below that of virgin filler.